Dr. J Suitor

Biography

J. Jill Suitor is a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Sociology at Purdue University. She earned her Ph.D. in Sociology from the State University of New York at Stony Brook in 1985. Dr. Suitor's research focuses on interpersonal relations and well-being, particularly the dynamics between parents and adult children, as well as sibling relationships in adulthood. She employs mixed methods in her studies and has extensively researched the processes and contexts surrounding family caregiving. Her work has garnered support from prestigious organizations, including the National Institute on Aging and the National Institute of Mental Health, resulting in over 140 published journal articles and book chapters. She has also served as Deputy Editor-in-Chief for the journal Innovation in Aging and as an Associate Editor for the Journal of Gerontology: Social Sciences. Dr. Suitor is an active contributor to the field, having held positions in several National Institutes of Health Study Sections. She regularly teaches graduate and undergraduate courses focusing on family relationships and the life course, with a specific emphasis on later-life families. In 2001, she led the Family Differences Study, a NIH-supported longitudinal investigation examining the causes and consequences of within-family differences in parental favoritism across over 550 multigenerational families.

Research Interests